The creator of an energy generating football makes Inc’s top 30 CEOs under 30

MEET 28-YEAR-OLD Harvard graduate Jessica O Matthews, the US entrepreneur who has made Inc’s top 30 CEOs under 30 list.

With Uncharted Play, Jessica’s aim is to turn anything that moves into an energy source.

At the age of 19, when she invented the SOCCKET ball, an energy generating soccer ball that provides off-grid power for the developing world.

By 22, she became the co-founder and chief executive officer of Uncharted Play, Inc., where she currently drives the creative vision of an award-winning social enterprise with a mission to disarm social ills by inspiring people to lead playful lives.

Expanding her reach to global infrastructural projects, at the age of 26, Jessica became a co-Founder and Executive Director for KDDC, a 30 megawatt hydropower dam in Nigeria — one of the first to be privatised in the country.

As of 2015, Uncharted Play was worth $6.2m and Jessica currently has 10 employees working under her.

The products are typically purchased by governments and large corporations that brand them, and distribute them in Africa, mostly through NGOs.

Jessica’s wildly ambitious goal is to “democratise on-demand power for everyone” by rebranding her company as M.O.R.E. (motion-based, off-grid, renewable energy), an energy company that’s creating a microgenerating system that can harness the kinetic energy of just about anything that moves. On deck: a baby stroller that generates enough power to charge a cell phone.